When the Democratic National Convention rolls into town next August, emergency-response officials will be monitoring everything from where news vans are parked, to the severity of traffic tie-ups on the 101, to the progress of a party speaker’s commute to the Staples Center all with the click of a mouse. It’s made possible by a new emergency management Internet software system developed by E Team of Canoga Park. “We refer to it as emergency and event management,” said E Team chief executive Matt Walton. “It means you’re able to coordinate thousands of people to ensure things happen without a hitch, and the system makes it easy.” Users log onto the Web site to pinpoint the exact location of, say, an incident where emergency vehicles and crews are needed, the best routes to that scene, and even details about the scene itself. (Site content is developed and supplied by map company ESRI, under a partnership deal.) And because it is accessed through the Internet, hundreds of officials from any of the city of L.A.’s 42 agencies, the secret Service or other emergency service groups can access the information and communicate with each other. “It links all of the city with technology that is Web-based, which seemed to be the best way to reach more people,” said Ellis Stanley, who heads the city’s emergency operations. “If an emergency happens, anyone can interface with the shared information immediately.” Stanley said the city chose E Team software because it can be accessed by hundreds of people from different public- and private-sector agencies. Charges for the E Team software are based on the number of users authorized to access the system, as well as whether the customer opts to use its own server, or E Team’s. The city of L.A. is using its own server and paying E Team about $300 a year for each user, said Stanley, adding that competing systems charge as much as $1,500 or more. There are currently about 100 users, although that number will increase to about 200 by the time the convention arrives. “It’s different than selling books and toys,” said Walton. “We’re involved in coordinating situations that concern life and death.” Besides the city of L.A., clients include the cities of Philadelphia and San Francisco, the Federal Department of Transportation, U.S. Coast Guard and Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., according to Walton, who expects E Team to become profitable within the next year. E Team’s roots stretch back to 1989, when its predecessor company was a Defense Department contractor. In 1994, the company won a contract to design an Internet system that the military could use to coordinate field operations. “The Northridge (earthquake) happened at about the same time and we had a chance to see the confusion and inability of agencies to share information with each other,” Walton said. E Team has focused its sales on government agencies so far, but Walton said the company plans to market to private-sector companies, which could use the system to coordinate distribution in the event of an emergency. Eventually, Walton envisions E Team’s system as a replacement for the Emergency Broadcast System that currently provides alerts on television and radio. The system will get its first major test on New Year’s Eve. Both the city of L.A. and the U.S. Department of Transportation will have the system operational during the millennial change to monitor its impact on the region. E Team is not alone in designing emergency management programs. Its biggest competitor is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has a client server program it sells to other government agencies. Several states, including California, have also designed their own emergency systems. Walton says the benefit of E Team is that it is Internet-ready and anyone with a password can log on anywhere, regardless of the user’s computer platform or software. Several E Team employees come from the California Office of Emergency Services and emergency planning offices in the military. Bruce Ward, E Team director of professional services, joined the company a year ago after leaving OES, where he was director of emergency operations planning and training. Before that, Ward headed LAPD emergency operations planning during the 1992 riots. “During the riots, we were all gathered at the Emergency Operation Center below City Hall, and we had to rely on phones and faxes for communication,” Ward said. “One hour into it, we couldn’t get calls in because there weren’t enough phones. It’s a great tool to communicate information and really, during an emergency, that’s what you need.”
